The Elms and Well which Mark the Site of “The Beecher House” in Litchfield.

CHAPTER III.

       CHILDHOOD.

       Table of Contents

      Early Glimpses—Recollections of the Mother—Going to School at Ma’am Kilbourne’s—His First Letter—District School—The Coming of the New Mother—His First Ride on Horseback—A Merry Household—Fishing Excursions—Minister’s Wood-Spell—Saturday Night—Going to Meeting—The Puritan Sabbath—The Cold of Litchfield Hill—Rats—Work—The Catechism—Formative Influences—Summing Up.

      We of course see but little of him in these early years.

      “The younger members of the Beecher family came into existence in a great, bustling household of older people, all going their several ways and having their own grown-up interests to carry.

      “The child growing up in this busy, active circle had constantly impressed upon it a sense of personal insignificance as a child, and the absolute need of the virtue of passive obedience and non-resistance as regards all grown-up people. To be statedly washed and dressed and catechised, got to school at regular hours in the morning and to bed inflexibly at the earliest possible hour at night, comprised about all the attention that children could receive in those days.”

      Here and there a glimpse is given, just enough to tell us the direction the stream is taking. The first is found in a letter of the mother to her sister, Harriet Foote, written when he was a little more than a year old:

      “July 12, 1814.— … I arrived Saturday at sunset, and found all well, and boy (Henry Ward) in merry trim, glad at heart to be safe on terra firma after all his jolts and tossings.”

      Again in November of the same year:

      “I write sitting upon my feet with my paper on the seat of a chair, while Henry is hanging round my neck and climbing on my back.”

      He himself gives an experience of a little later period:

      “I remember very well when I was but two years old (strange as it may seem; sometimes I think I spent all my remembering power on that early period!) finding myself in the east entry of my father’s great house, alone, coming down-stairs, or trying to. The sudden sense which I had of being alone frightened me, and I gave one shriek; and then the echo of my voice scared me worse, and I gave another shriek that was more emphatic; and I remember seeing the light stream in from the dining-room, and being taken up by loving hands. The face I do not recall, the form I do not recall; but I remember the warm pressure. It was my mother, who died when I was three years old. She took me to her bosom. I recollect sitting by the side of some one who made me feel very happy; and I recollect seeing my father’s swart face on the other side of the table.

      “Now I could not paint my mother’s face; but I know how her bosom felt. I know how her arms felt. I have a filial sense, a child’s interpretation, of motherhood. It was only an emotion or instinct in me, but it was blessed.”

      This incident of the mother is supplemented by two of the sister Harriet, in which the little boy Henry had a part:

      “In my own early childhood,” she says, “only two incidents of my mother twinkle like rays through the darkness. One was of our all running and dancing out before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning, and her pleasant voice saying after us, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ ”

      Another remembrance is this: “Mother was an enthusiastic horticulturist in all the small ways that limited means allowed. Her brother John, in New York, had just sent her a small parcel of tulip bulbs. I remember rummaging these out of an obscure corner of the nursery one day when she was out, and being strongly seized with the idea that they were good to eat, and using all the little English I possessed to persuade my brothers that these were onions such as grown people ate, and would be very nice for us. So we fell to and devoured the whole; and I recollect being somewhat disappointed in the odd, sweetish taste, and thinking that onions were not as nice as I had supposed. Then mother’s serene face appeared at the nursery door, and we all ran toward her and with one voice began to tell our discovery and achievement. We had found this bag of onions and had eaten them all up. Also I remember that there was not even a momentary expression of impatience, but that she sat down and said: ‘My dear children, what you have done makes mamma very sorry. Those were not onion-roots, but roots of beautiful flowers; and if you had let them alone ma would have had next summer in the garden great, beautiful red and yellow flowers such as you never saw.’ I remember how drooping and dispirited we all grew at this picture, and how sadly we regarded the empty bag.”

      When the mother grew sick and the children were admitted to her bedside once a day, Henry was among the number, although no memory of the fact lingered with him in after-years.

      Mrs. Stowe writes of this event:

      “I have a vision of a very fair face with a bright red spot on each cheek, and a quiet smile as she offered me a spoonful of her gruel; of our dreaming one night, we little ones, that mamma had got well, and waking in loud transports of joy, and being hushed down by some one coming into the room. Our dream was indeed a true one. She was for ever well; but they told us she was dead, and took us in to see what seemed so cold and so unlike anything we had ever seen or known of her.”

      Mrs. Reeve, one of the most intimate friends of the family, writes of the last day of her life:

      “She told her husband that her views and anticipations of heaven had been so great that she could hardly sustain it, and if they had been increased she should have been overwhelmed, and that her Saviour had constantly blessed her; that she had peace without one cloud, and that she had never during her sickness prayed for her life. She dedicated her sons to God for missionaries, and said that her greatest desire was that her children might be trained up for God, and she trusted God would, in his own time, provide another companion for him that would more than fill her place.

      “She spoke of the advancement of Christ’s kingdom with joy, and of the glorious day that was ushering in.

      “She attempted to speak to her children, but she was extremely exhausted, and their cries and sobs were such that she could say but little. She told them that God could do more for them than she had done or could do, and that they must trust him.

      “Mr. Beecher then made a prayer, in which he gave her back to God and dedicated all that they held in common to him. She then fell into a sweet sleep from which she awoke in heaven. It is a most moving scene to see eight little children weeping around the bed of a dying mother; but still it was very cheering to see how God could take away the sting of death and give such a victory over the grave.”

      Mr. Beecher’s remembrance of this event was simply of a feeling of fear and pain at the weeping of the children around him, and of interest in the baby, Charles, in his little white dress, as he was lifted up in the arms of one of the attendants.

      Of the funeral we read from Mrs. Stowe’s pen:

      “Henry was too little to go; I remember his golden curls and little black frock, as he frolicked like a kitten in the sun in ignorant joy.

      “I remember the mourning dresses, the tears of the older children, the walking to the burial-ground and somebody’s speaking at the grave, and the audible sobbing of the family; and then all was closed, and we little ones, to whom it was so confused, asked the question where she was gone and would she never come back? They told us at one time that she had been laid in the ground, at another that she had gone to heaven. Whereupon Henry, putting the two things together, resolved to dig through the ground and go to find her; for being discovered under sister Catherine’s window one morning digging with great zeal and earnestness, she called to him to know what he was doing, and, lifting his curly head, with great simplicity he answered: ‘Why, I am going